UMass Dartmouth

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I am a professor in the physics department at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, with research interests including computational and theoretical studies of Type Ia supernovae, giant molecular clouds, star and brown dwarf formation, and astrochemistry.

I am pursuing several new and exciting research projects with my graduate and undergraduate students in my active and lively research group. Interested hard-working graduate and undergraduate students are welcome to stop by my office to talk to me. I am also the current graduate program director for the physics department, and am more than happy to answer questions from prospective Ph.D. and Masters students interested in applying to our graduate program.

Astronomers have made a major breakthrough in identifying the stellar systems which explode as a class of unusually dim supernovae -- the so-called Type Iax systems. The news announcement seems to confirm a prediction my colleagues and I made in a 2012 paper: that such systems originate from the single-degenerate channel of a white dwarf and a non-degenerate companion, although these may be originating from both helium main sequence and hydrogen main sequence channels. (8/7/14)

Group member Jillian Bolinger has been selected as one of only 60 students nationwide to participate in the Council on Undergraduate Research Posters on the Hill Event in Washington DC in April. Congratulations Jillian! (2/5/14)

Our group's research is now featured in a new video at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC)! The video, made by Helen Hill of MIT, comes at an apt time, just as SN2014J -- the nearest Type Ia supernova to Earth to be detected since 1972 -- nears peak brightness. (1/29/14)

Prof. Fisher has been named a Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) Scholar for 2014 - 16. (12/3/13)

It's been a great year for graduating group members applying to graduate schools! Peter Jumper has accepted a Connaught International Fellowship at the University of Toronto Astronomy & Astrophysics Ph.D. program, Suoqing Ji a Paxton Fellowship in Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Barbara Physics Ph.D. program. Peter was also the recipient of a NSF Graduate Fellowship, which he has declined. Kevin Jumper, Peter's twin brother, will be enrolling in the Ph.D. program in Astronomy at UT Austin. Congratulations to all -- well-deserved! (4/13/13)

Our group has examined the process of white dwarf mergers in detailed numerical simulations which, for the first time, include the role of the magnetic field in detail. Among other conclusions, we find that a weak magnetic field is highly-amplified by the magnetorotational instability, and gives rise to a high-field magnetic white dwarf. The paper, written with my graduate student Suoqing Ji and two former DAAD RISE summer interns, Pascal Cremer and Jan Behrends, as well as colleagues in Chicago, Spain, and the UK, is now submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. (2/22/13)

Update: The paper is now accepted. (6/27/13)

Group alumnus Pascal Cremer has been admitted as a CHESS fellow to Cambridge University's Masters Program in Applied Mathematics -- part III of their famed Mathematical Tripos. (2/6/13)

A paper which I wrote with my former M.S. student Avinash Kumar on the astrochemical evolution of turbulent giant molecular clouds is now accepted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. (1/30/13)

Our recent paper written with colleagues in Chicago and the Technion exploring the outcome of failed detonations in Type Ia supernovae has been accepted to Astrophysical Journal Letters. In contrast to previous models, we predict that a kicked, Fe-enriched white dwarf remnant will reside in very subluminuous SNe Ia. (11/15/12)

Addition: The story is being picked up in a wide range of news outlets across the web. (11/19/12)

Update: A Harvard CfA team led by Ryan Foley reports (News story) the discovery of a class of subluminous supernovae which fit many of the characteristics of our model. (3/27/12)

The American Physical Society has named group member Peter Jumper member a finalist for the highly-prestigious Apker prize. The Apker prize is the highest honor bestowed upon undergraduate physics majors by the APS. Peter had the additional honor of being the only current undergraduate selected among 6 other finalists now in graduate school. (8/18/12)

Group member Kevin Jumper wins first place, and a $1,000 prize, in the first annual UMD Undergraduate 3-minute research presentation! Kevin also won a best speaker award for a presentation at the APS April meeting. Congrats, Kevin! (4/30/12)

Graduate student David Falta's, colleague Gaurav Khanna's, and my recent work on the gravitational wave emission from Type Ia supernovae was featured in a news story in NCSA's Access Magazine. This work was also featured in a Forbes Science blog post by John Farrell. (9/11)

UMass Dartmouth released a press release on the recent acquisition of my NSF- and AFOSR-sponsored GPGPU cluster. (6/15/10)

Wired magazine featured our pulsationally-assisted gravitationally-confined detonation visualizations as one of the "best science visualizations of 2009." Discover Magazine's Cosmic Variance blog also covered this story. Our award for the INCITE supercomputer time for this project was itself featured in slashdot.